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What time is it? Look at the European elections

The elections for the European Union Parliament in late May reflected powerful currents ripping through the global capitalist imperialist order. These elections normally are low key compared to national elections around Europe. This year was different. In most countries turnout was markedly higher, and around the continent fascist forces gained or kept ground in the European Parliament.

The global crisis boiling up within the capitalist-imperialist system has led growing sections of ruling classes in Europe, as around the world, to turn to desperate measures – to shift their allegiance away from the traditional liberal, multicultural forms of bourgeois-democratic rule that have prevailed since World War 2 and towards fascism. Throughout Europe, the “left-wing” parliamentary parties – among them Britain’s Labour, Germany’s Social Democrats and Greens, Denmark’s Social Democrats, France’s Socialists – resist the rise of the fascists, even as they adopt ever larger parts of their programme. Both ends of this traditional bourgeois spectrum, fascist and social democratic alike, are, ultimately, representatives of the same capitalist-imperialist system.

The EU Parliamentary elections took on unusual importance in this turbulent landscape. In Europe so far fascists “only” hold power in Hungary, Poland and Italy. But everywhere they are increasingly setting the terms for the way society is governed. In Hungary, immigrants are locked up in near-starvation conditions in barbed-wire camps while Jews are blamed for their presence. In Poland, abortion is banned amid strident calls for a religious crusade to make Europe Catholic. “Dark” faces in Italy’s streets are regularly hunted and beaten, while Mussolini (the father of modern fascism and Hitler’s Italian ally before and during World War 2) is rehabilitated. It had long been assumed by progressive people in Europe that the continent had been immunized against the return of fascism by the horrors experienced in the 1930s and 1940s. Reality is starkly demonstrating otherwise.

In France, the fascist party of Marine LePen came first in the EU elections, amid the near collapse of the “left” and “right” parties that have taken turns governing for generations. Le Pen crowed that this strengthened her claim for legitimacy as head of state, a “representative of the people”.

In the UK, the two political parties, Tory and Labour, that have taken turns crushing the people and their minds for a century were hit hard by the rise of the Brexit Party of Nigel Farage – the openly fascist father of the “leave the EU” movement – with his slogan, “Put the great back in Great Britain”. Farage is the personification of the racism and unabashed xenophobia and nationalism that was always at the heart of Brexit. The current Tory Prime Minister Theresa May has resigned in disgrace. The leading candidate for her replacement is Boris Johnson, who has Trump’s open support. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party are out to prove that they too can “get back control of our borders and our country”, deciding everything on the basis of what appears good for “the British worker” – “our people”. This is all the more disgusting in countries whose wealth was amassed through imperialist looting and slavery, and whose immigrants largely come from former colonies and other oppressed countries, crushed – then and now – to produce this wealth.

In Germany, the mainstream media expressed relief that, “after all”, the fascist AfD didn’t do as well as feared. Yet this is a country where not only has the AfD become normalized, with over 90 representatives in the Bundestag, but so has the outlook that party represents. The ruling coalition led by Angela Merkel, which effectively justified mob attacks against immigrants, has now declared that religious Jews should not expect to be protected if they are seen wearing a yarmulke (skull cap) – an ominous sign in the land that gave the world Aushchwitz.

All this has implications beyond Europe’s borders. In a Paris interview, the American fascist ideologue Steve Bannon emphasized the relationship between the world fascist movement’s component parts and its overall momentum: “Trump would not have been elected without Brexit. It gave him a push. If populists [here meaning fascists… (do well in these elections)], that will give him another push that will help him in 2020 [the next U.S. presidential elections].” (Le Parisien, 17 May)

The economies and states that emerged after the unprecedented disasters of World War 2 – old and new representatives of the same ruling classes as before – were supposed to prove that capitalism-imperialism had fundamentally changed, that now it was a force for good. Since then, bourgeois democracy has meant, as a poet wrote, “ballot boxes stuffed with corpses”. An honest look at what’s going on right now shows this: For years now thousands of immigrants have been drowning in the Mediterranean every year while “civilised” Europe has erected ever greater barriers to their entry. Now it’s been made illegal to rescue refugees in distress – by the fascist government of Italy and the “centrist” government of France, with full-out support from the EU and UN. Tens of thousands of children have starved to death, and hospitals and homes are constantly bombed in Yemen – with the UK and France, along with the fascist Trump regime in the US, giving the military and logistics backing to Saudi Arabia that makes this invasion possible. Syria, Libya and so many other countries have been torn apart in wars fuelled by imperialist rivalries and a religious fundamentalism that came out of the womb of the imperialist system itself – which is one key reason immigrants are fleeing to Europe in the first place! And everywhere the onslaught on the environment continues unabated, even as scientists report with increasing frequency that the ecological crisis facing the planet is accelerating.

In this situation of great turmoil, there is an urgent need for the emergence of a core of revolutionary forces that are clear on the need to unite broadly with the seething anger and disgust at the rising fascist forces, while pointing out how they grow from the soil of capitalism itself. A force that understands that parties like UK Labour and the rest of the parliamentary “left” around Europe are more afraid of rousing the masses from below to fight the rise of the fascists than they are of the fascists themselves – that they seek to resolve the crisis facing this system on the terms of the system – and that their main role is to corral and domesticate dissent, keeping it within the proven established channels of that system.

One vital step in this effort is for people in Europe to check out the writings and videos of Bob Avakian, the architect of the new communism, who has extensively and deeply analyzed the rise of the fascist Trump-Pence regime in the US within the context of the history and dynamics of capitalist-imperialism. Go to revcom.us and check out in particular the video: “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go/ In the name of humanity, we REFUSE to accept a fascist America”. There are also numerous film clips of the Q&A with BA following the film that are of key relevance to young revolutionaries in Europe, such as “The Democrats are supposed to be the lesser of two evils, but I don’t want to vote for them. I know the system sucks, but what are we supposed to do in the interim?”, or “What’s the relationship between driving out the Trump/Pence fascist regime and making revolution?” and many more.

* * *“Fascism is the exercise of blatant dictatorship by the bourgeois (capitalist-imperialist) class, ruling through reliance on open terror and violence, trampling on what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, wielding the power of the state, and mobilizing organized groups of fanatical thugs, to commit atrocities against masses of people, particularly groups of people identified as ‘enemies’, ‘undesirables’, or ‘dangers to society’.
“At the same time – and this can be seen through studying the examples of Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini – while it will likely move quickly to enforce certain repressive measures in consolidating its rule, a fascist regime is also likely to implement its programme overall through a series of stages and even attempt at different points to reassure the people, or certain groups among the people, that they will escape the horrors – if they quietly go along and do not protest or resist while others are being terrorized and targeted for repression, deportation, ‘conversion’, prison or execution.” – www.revcom.us

Editorial:

Introducing a transformed AWTWNS

14 March 2017. A World to Win News Service. With great joy, the editors of A World To Win News Service announce its transformation into a more thorough-going tool for revolution based on Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism.

AWTW News Service first saw life in January 2003, at a critical juncture when under the banner of their global "war on terror" the US-led imperialists had launched and were expanding what was in fact a war for empire. After invading Afghanistan, they were preparing to invade Iraq. It was a time when a powerful people's war was surging forward in Nepal, led by revolutionaries who were participants in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. RIM gathered communists from around the world who, in the wake of the defeat of the revolution in China following the death of Mao Tsetung, banded together from the five continents to strengthen the struggle to do away with the capitalist system through revolution.

AWTW News Service was inspired by RIM, which based itself on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). During the years since then, the news service untiringly exposed the crimes of the imperialists in many corners of the globe, bringing to light stories of popular resistance against oppression, analysing how all oppression was ultimately rooted in the system of capitalism-imperialism, and pointing to the need for the solution, revolution.

These past fourteen years have seen major developments, including the collapse of RIM itself. Not only are some of the forces previously united in RIM now sharply opposed to each other, the previous understanding of revolutionary communism itself has, to borrow Mao Zedong’s term, "divided into two". One strand of the old Maoism has wound up in a social-democratic liquidation of the core revolutionary principles of Marxism, exemplified tragically in the capitulation of the Maoist leadership in Nepal and the termination of the revolutionary war there. Others from the previous MLM movement are stuck in a dogmatist, religious-like upholding of sterile "Maoist" formulas that are equally devoid of revolutionary content. In opposition to this, Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism has fully emerged, rescuing the scientific kernel of communism while criticizing and repudiating those secondary aspects in the past understanding and actions of communists that have actually gone against communism's liberatory nature. The result is that we now have a qualitatively more scientific framework for understanding the world and changing it through revolution, which is gaining adherents from among forces previously part of RIM as well as others more recently attracted to communism. (For more on RIM, its history, its collapse and the division of Maoism into two, see Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage – A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and Letter to Participating Parties and Organizations of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.)

And how the world cries out for revolution! Everywhere inequality has intensified, women face the violent intensification of patriarchy and degradation, and whole states in parts of the Third World are written off as "failed" and left to rot. The hopes of millions worldwide that soared as US-backed dictators were toppled by mass uprisings in the “Arab Spring” were dashed with the re-consolidation of reactionary rule. War has ripped gaping wounds in the Middle East as the Western imperialists and their local allies contend with reactionary Islamic jihadists, trapping the masses in a vortex of terror and despair. Millions have been driven from their homes, and thousands drown in desperate attempts to cross the Mediterranean to safety – while those few who make it face ever higher walls erected by these same imperialists to keep them out, physical walls as well as the walls of hatred being whipped up against them. Now, after years of normalizing mounting levels of nationalist jingoism, racism and misogyny, the dynamics of this system have propelled the fascist Donald Trump into the post of commander-in-chief of US imperialism. This in turn is giving major impetus to fascist movements that have been steadily gnawing their way into the political mainstream of Europe – in Austria, Hungary and Poland, and now the Netherlands, France, Germany and elsewhere. Throughout the oppressed nations too, the rise of “strong men” like India's Modi, Turkey's Erdogan, Duterte in the Philippines and others, tells the same story: the post-World War 2 order is rapidly coming apart at the seams.

The most fundamental question facing humanity today is whether this great turmoil will give rise to the establishment of regimes that are far more repressive and reactionary than even those today, with an unprecedented intensification of oppression and inequality, the unleashing of war and famine, environmental catastrophe and potentially far worse, or whether the oppressed can be enabled to rise, led by a core of conscious revolutionaries, and dismantle the existing state apparatuses in key parts of the world and establish radically new state powers that begin to do away with all oppression and exploitation. This has everything to do with how well hundreds and thousands today can be armed with a scientific approach to reality and act on that basis. Today this means transforming AWTW News Service into one firmly based on Avakian's new communism, a task that is proudly being assumed by the communists who have been the driving force in it over these years – a task that you are being asked to join in, in countless ways: reposting, distributing, writing, reporting, debating and corresponding with it, to name but a few.

Articles are needed that lay bare how the source of every kind of oppression in every country is ultimately rooted in the capitalist-imperialist system, whether it be through analysing the coup d'etat in Turkey, the failure of the Syriza experiment in Greece, the rise of fascism in the US and Europe, etc.

The news service needs analysis that lays bare the major faultlines ripping through every class-divided society and propelling millions into questioning and resistance, to help increasing numbers make the leap from being fighters on one front against capitalist oppression to fighters on every front. To take just one example, it needs to highlight the many different ways that brave forces are stepping outside normal channels to resist the draconian measures being enacted against migrants, exposing how it is the capitalist-imperialist system that is driving immigration and clamping down on migrants. It has to help establish a powerful internationalist current around this burning issue – showing why and how it is essential that the "whole world comes first", rather than "what does this mean for me and my country" – so as to bridge borders between peoples, to change not only what people think but how they think, to train them in the communist line and outlook. Or, in relation to patriarchy, to bring out why you cannot break all the links in the chain of capitalist oppression except one, why leaving male supremacy unchallenged quickly opens the door to the strengthening of every form of division and inequality. All this is part of the process of "fighting the power and transforming the people, for revolution" – and not least of all, bringing forth a new generation of revolutionary leaders in this process, who can use this news service to help identify and bring together more revolutionary forces wherever they may be.

It is critical to expose the system and its institutions and structures, but it is also vital to put forward the solution, a new kind of state power and a new way of organising the society and economy to meet people's needs in the broadest, most liberating sense, and step-by-step enable people to make the transition, through revolution, to a whole new world of flourishing humanity, armed with critical thinking and free of the shackles of class, patriarchy and all social divisions and inequalities. To do this we need to take on and tear apart the reactionary verdict on revolution and socialism. Otherwise, our criticism of the existing system loses force and purpose. Furthermore, based on the new synthesis summation of the socialist experiences of the 20th century, we need to show the necessity, possibility and desirability of Avakian's re-envisaged socialist society – how it not only meets the basic needs of the people, but will be a vibrant society marked by an unprecedented flourishing of intellectual and cultural life.

Without BA's new communism and the understanding that has developed on the basis of his approach and method, even for those who have vital elements of understanding about how thoroughly rotten all that exists really is, it is difficult to understand that the world doesn't have to be the way it is, that the potential for a radically different way of living for all humanity lies entangled in today's web of contradictions that are driving society, trapping oppressed humanity in dog-eat-dog relations, and threatening unprecedented disasters. Avakian's visionary understanding of the goal of communism shows how that is not only possible, but an urgent necessity, crying out for action right now.

With this understanding as the solid foundation of the news service, its pages will be open to others who, from different perspectives and approaches, bring to the light of day otherwise hidden stories of resistance and opposition to the prevailing order, shed light on the crimes of the system and how it works, reveal the complexity of the forces at work, and do all this in a way that compels others to turn to this site as a vibrant hub of critical analysis and debate. To truly become a weapon for revolution in growing parts of the world, articles need to be shared, correspondence is needed, key articles translated into different languages, and more. To further this, the news service will rupture from its weekly edition format that has been more oriented to the print media epoch, and instead focus on releasing articles on the Web hot on the heels of major events in the world. We need contributions from all those able to help so that the now far too narrow scope of our articles, limited by our current abilities, can begin to better match the needs of what must necessarily be a global revolutionary process.

Hard truths need to be stated clearly from the outset: the strength of the forces worldwide fighting for communist revolution pales in comparison to the immense challenges before us. But it is an even more important truth that never before in history has there existed a clearer and more scientific understanding of the source of oppression and what is needed to do away with it. On this foundation, A World To Win News Service can and must become a powerful tool serving all those who long for an end to oppression and exploitation, drawing forward and training thousands and influencing millions in many countries around the world, hastening the day when humanity can break free of the shackles that have enchained it for all too long.